Local taxpayers are left powerless when councils cut the wrong services

Local people in Haringey have not decided decided to cut the most important
services. The councillors have.

7:01AM GMT 09 Mar 2011

SIR – Andrew Gilligan (Comment, March 7) demonstrates what can happen when an elected local council such as Haringey (Labour-run for 40 years) decides that its most vulnerable residents should take the hit when it comes to cuts.

Local people have not decided that this is what they want – the councillors have. Most local people are outraged when they learn that services for the most vulnerable will be cut – day centres for the elderly and disabled, residential homes for people with severe learning disabilities, a crisis centre for psychiatric patients.

Surely the government of the day cannot stand back and, like Pontius Pilate, wash its hands. These little centres will not be able to organise themselves into charitable trusts and compete with the big fundraisers. Their people are poor or unwell, and won’t have the contacts or the personal resources to organise to keep such places open.

Haringey council has misused huge amounts of its income. It has continued to pay vast amounts to its top tier of bureaucrats. (A freedom of information question recently revealed that salaries of its top 100 earners total more than £7 million). Its councillors may have professed sorrow when they voted in these cuts, but not one offered to take a pay cut.

Neither did they agree to cut Haringey People – the glossy magazine posted out to every household – which politically promotes the opinions and “good works” of the ruling party.

What can local taxpayers in boroughs such as Haringey do in the face of a council hell-bent on maintaining its bureaucrats’ lifestyles, yet absolving itself of its duty to its most vulnerable residents?

Sue Hessel Haringey Federation of Residents’ Associations London N8

SIR – Councils are very transparent places compared with the rest of the public sector. Who reading this knows what the Civil Service, police, fire brigade or NHS spend their money on? Who knows how many Whitehall mandarins, local GPs and police officers earn more than £100,000?

Who knows how to have their say about health care, policing, their fire station, where our buses go or how our energy is produced.

Sutton Council is one of the three Big Society “vanguard authorities”. If the Government is serious about the Big Society, then it’s high time the same transparency rules were applied to all parts of the public sector.

SIR – I contacted our local council to have our wheelie bins changed to a smaller size. I received a letter back from them agreeing to this change, signed by the “Executive Director of Wheelie-Bins”.

Les Black South Shields, Tyne & Wear

Enemies of enterprise seek controls on tobacco

SIR – Today, smokers are asked to observe No Smoking Day. They may also finally get to hear Government proposals that could ban the display of tobacco products in retail outlets, and only allow tobacco to be sold in plain, state-prescribed packaging.

If the Coalition is committed to defeating the enemies of enterprise, as David Cameron, the Prime Minister, claims, a good start would be to call a halt to the relentless campaign to “denormalise” smoking through an endless barrage of new controls, directives and diktats.

Mr Cameron claimed last weekend that he would wage war on bureaucrats who concoct ridiculous rules and regulations. Banning the branding of tobacco products or making cigarettes an under-the-counter product would be yet another victory for these very bureaucrats. Life would become more difficult for newsagents and tobacconists and easier for the providers of illicit tobacco to pass off their wares as legitimate.

We cannot yet be sure about whether the Prime Minister’s commitment to combating regulation and red tape is truly serious. If his Government now unveils proposals to further restrict the sale and purchase of tobacco, it will be a clear sign that his new commitment to enterprise is little more than political rhetoric.

SIR – In 2009, a man was sentenced to 250 hours’ community service for urinating on a war memorial while drunk. The judge said prison had been a serious option, but he had “never seen anyone before him who was more contrite”.

I am at a loss, therefore, to work out how the same judicial system can give a £50 fine for a deliberate and sober insult to the war dead (“Muslim’s £50 fine for burning poppies a 'badge of honour’ ”, report, March 8).

If anyone outraged public decency this week, I fear he was wearing a wig.

Michael S. Ross Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

SIR – If those who were killed while thinking that they were fighting for our freedoms could express an opinion, which would make them angry – that we would exercise those freedoms by burning poppies, or that such burning would result in prosecution and punishment?

Gareth Evans Chippenham, Wiltshire

Waterloo on sea

SIR – At least the BBC is consistent in rewriting history (Letters, March 8). Last Friday’s Escape to the Country dealt with property in Norfolk, Nelson’s birthplace, and the presenter referred to him as the hero of Waterloo.

Mike Jones London E4

Grateful of German Bight

SIR – I was surprised to read Captain P J Newton’s letter (March 8) saying that in 44 years he never listened to Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast while at sea. While working round the coasts of north-west Europe during the late 1970s and early 1980s, I always listened to it.

For professional seamen today, this has largely been replaced by Navtext and downloaded forecasts from satellites. Weather forecasting has become sophisticated, with companies supplying charts of wave heights, swell directions, as well as pressure and wind directions.

This is beyond the scope of the BBC Shipping Forecast, but the forecasts it gives are accurate enough for its purposes. Professional shipping may no longer listen in, but I suspect that inshore fishermen and yachtsmen still do.

Captain James Manson Hereford

Question Time lullaby

SIR – I am in complete agreement with R M Ferrie (Letters, March 5) about Question Time. Each side is more concerned with point-scoring than answering the questions, and it is no longer worth remaining up for.

A. C. Preston Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey

Almond teeth?

SIR – At Christmas, I was given a pretty jewelled hair comb in a fitted box. A label (Letters, March 8) on the bottom of the box read: “Warning, this product may contain nuts.”

The Countess of Harewood Harewood House, West Yorkshire

Watch your step

SIR – Can any of your readers explain why I move seamlessly from floor to stairs, yet when confronted with a broken escalator always hesitate in my stride?

John Dixon Bognor Regis, West Sussex

Duke of York’s rivals

SIR – Even without a whiff of impropriety, there is a danger that the Duke of York’s role as special representative for trade and investment is doing more damage than good.

It must surely be infuriating to nations such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand when a member of the Royal family – their Royal family as well, after all – is sent around the globe to boost Britain when it is in direct competition with fellow members of the Commonwealth to secure business. It must also be doing republicanism in these places no end of good.

Catherine Morley London W13

SIR – You report (March 7) that the Duke’s trade trips cost the taxpayer £15 million. I have seen the work the Duke does. On occasion he may have been naive, but he has brought millions to Britain’s economy.

Would it not be more balanced to print a profit and loss account for his activities?

Danny Cox Dublin, Ireland

SIR – Has “innocent until proved guilty” been overthrown by “Caesar’s wife”?

P. Bryan Enfield Chesterfield, Derbyshire

SIR – It’s such a shame that the Duke and Duchess of York are divorced. They really are made for each other.

As the only party that trusts the voters of Britain to call referendums on any matter on which our remote governing elite fails to represent their wishes, with the results binding Parliament, we are the party not of hatred or of xenophobia, but of love. That is why the young and idealistic are joining Ukip.